Pioneer Press: Donors, Data-Security Experts Blast Coleman Campaign

The St. Paul Pioneer Press has a news article this morning that is a blistering attack on the Coleman camp's latest foul-up: "As recently as late January, databases of thousands of Coleman's donors and assorted contacts sat on a public portion of the campaign's Web site. They were not password-protected, so a Minneapolis consultant was able to find them by essentially surfing the Web."

The Coleman campaign's position is that they did not believe any data was downloaded in January, and that the site might have been hacked at a later date, probably by partisan enemies. But the Pioneer Press -- which endorsed Coleman for re-election last year, by the way -- doesn't appear to be buying it.

Coleman-supporter Kelly McShane, who donated $100 online and whose job is to secure data for the banking industry, had this to say: "I'm in IT security for a bank, and I can tell you that this is so ... irresponsible that I can't believe it."

Eric Schultze, chief technology officer for a Minnesota-based computer-security company (not to be confused with DSCC spokesman and former Franken spokesman Eric Schultz) explained to the Pioneer Press that no Web site should be set up to store credit-card data on the same server as the rest of the site -- let alone in an unencrypted form. "Anybody worth their salt would not set up a Web site that way," said Schultze.